Pauley Preps for New ‘Sunday Morning’ Role

Jane Pauley slides into the CBS Sunday Morning host chair Oct. 9 and noted on CBS This Morning Friday that she’s the first non-Charles to host the show. Yes, Charles Kuralt helmed it starting in 1979, and Charles Osgood of course succeeded him in 1994.

Pauley will share a piece on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Sunday’s show. She’s been a contributor since 2014 and a substitute host, too. That, and keeping busy with Sunday Morning segments (besides the Bader Ginsburg story, she’s working on a Sarah Jessica Parker one), has kept the new-job jitters in check. “For 2 ½ years, this is where I’ve worked and what I’ve done,” Pauley tells B&C.

It was 40 years ago, almost to the day, that she started at Today alongside Tom Brokaw — Oct. 11, 1976. The almost 26-year-old greeted viewers with the following: “Every story I’ve seen begins by noting that a year and a half ago, Jane Pauley was a second string news reader in Indianapolis. That’s fact. Maybe you’re wondering how I got here, and maybe I am too.”

Introducing Pauley to viewers, Brokaw described his new co-anchor as bright, energetic, enterprising and “just incidentally, pretty as well.”

Back to 2016. Pauley does not envision big changes coming to Sunday Morning and says Osgood will remain a valued friend, though sounding board duties for stories and ideas go to exec producer Rand Morrison. “I expect to say hi to Charlie as often as I can,” she says.